The Development of Political Parties

The immediate postwar period witnessed the founding of Guyana's major
political parties, the People's Progressive Party (PPP) and the People's
National Congress (PNC). These years also saw the beginning of a long
and acrimonious struggle between the country's two dominant political
personalities--Cheddi Jagan and Linden Forbes Burnham.

The end of World War II began a period of worldwide decolonization.
In British Guiana, political awareness and demands for independence grew
in all segments of society. At the same time, the struggle for political
ascendancy between Burnham, the ""Man on Horseback""
of the Afro-Guyanese, and Jagan, the hero of the Indo-Guyanese masses,
left a legacy of racially polarized politics that remained in place in
the 1990s.

Jagan had been born in Guyana in 1918. His parents were immigrants
from India. His father was a driver, a position considered to be on the
lowest rung of the middle stratum of Guianese society. Jagan's childhood
gave him a lasting insight into rural poverty. Despite their poor
background, the senior Jagan sent his son to Queen's College in
Georgetown. After his education there, Jagan went to the United States
to study dentistry, graduating from Northwestern University in Evanston,
Illinois in 1942.

Jagan returned to British Guiana in October 1943 and was soon joined
by his American wife, the former Janet Rosenberg, who was to play a
significant role in her new country's political development. Although
Jagan established his own dentistry clinic, he was soon enmeshed in
politics. After a number of unsuccessful forays into Guiana's political
life, Jagan became treasurer of the Manpower Citizens Association (MPCA)
in 1945. The MPCA represented the colony's sugar workers, many of whom
were Indo- Guyanese. Jagan's tenure was brief, as he clashed repeatedly
with the more moderate union leadership over policy issues. Despite his
departure from the MPCA a year after joining, the position allowed Jagan
to meet other union leaders in British Guiana and throughout the
English-speaking Caribbean.

The springboard for Jagan's political career was the Political
Affairs Committee (PAC), formed in 1946 as a discussion group. The new
organization published the PAC Bulletin to promote its Marxist
ideology and ideas of liberation and decolonization. The PAC's outspoken
criticism of the colony's poor living standards attracted followers as
well as detractors.

In the November 1947 general elections, the PAC put forward several
members as independent candidates. The PAC's major competitor was the
newly formed Labour Party, which, under J.B. Singh, won six of fourteen
seats contested. Jagan won a seat and briefly joined the Labour Party.
But he had difficulties with his new party's center-right ideology and
soon left its ranks. The Labour Party's support of the policies of the
British governor and its inability to create a grass-roots base
gradually stripped it of liberal supporters throughout the country. The
Labour Party's lack of a clear-cut reform agenda left a vacuum, which
Jagan rapidly moved to fill. Turmoil on the colony's sugar plantations
gave him an opportunity to achieve national standing. After the June 16,
1948 police shootings of five Indo-Guyanese workers at Enmore, close to
Georgetown, the PAC and the Guiana Industrial Workers Union (GIWU)
organized a large and peaceful demonstration, which clearly enhanced
Jagan's standing with the Indo-Guyanese population.

Jagan's next major step was the founding of the People's Progressive
Party (PPP) in January 1950. Using the PAC as a foundation, Jagan
created from it a new party that drew support from both the
Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese communities. To increase support among
the Afro-Guyanese, Forbes Burnham was brought into the party.

Born in 1923, Burnham was the sole son in a family that had three
children. His father was headmaster of Kitty Methodist Primary School,
which was located just outside Georgetown. As part of the colony's
educated class, young Burnham was exposed to political viewpoints at an
early age. He did exceedingly well in school and went to London to
obtain a law degree. Although not exposed to childhood poverty as was
Jagan, Burnham was acutely aware of racial discrimination.

The social strata of the urban Afro-Guyanese community of the 1930s
and 1940s included a mulatto or ""coloured"" elite,
a black professional middle class, and, at the bottom, the black working
class. Unemployment in the 1930s was high. When war broke out in 1939,
many Afro-Guyanese joined the military, hoping to gain new job skills
and escape poverty. When they returned home from the war, however, jobs
were still scarce and discrimination was still a part of life. By the
time of Burnham's arrival on the political stage in the late 1940s, the
Afro-Guyanese community was ready for a leader.

The PPP's initial leadership was multiethnic and left of center, but
hardly revolutionary. Jagan became the leader of the PPP's parliamentary
group, and Burnham assumed the responsibilities of party chairman. Other
key party members included Janet Jagan and Ashton Chase, both PAC
veterans. The new party's first victory came in the 1950 municipal
elections, in which Janet Jagan won a seat. Cheddi Jagan and Burnham
failed to win seats, but Burnham's campaign made a favorable impression
on many urban Afro- Guyanese.

From its first victory in the 1950 municipal election, the PPP
gathered momentum. However, the party's often strident anticapitalist
and socialist message made the British government uneasy. Colonial
officials showed their displeasure with the PPP in 1952 when, on a
regional tour, the Jagans were designated prohibited immigrants in
Trinidad and Grenada.

A British commission in 1950 recommended universal adult suffrage and
the adoption of a ministerial system for British Guiana. The commission
also recommended that power be concentrated in the executive branch,
that is, the office of the governor. These reforms presented British
Guiana's parties with an opportunity to participate in national
elections and form a government, but maintained power in the hands of
the British- appointed chief executive. This arrangement rankled the
PPP, which saw it as an attempt to curtail the party's political power.